The Easy Quiet
by kenzcraw
Summary: The Red Kryptonite brought to light certain truths that both Danvers sisters would have rather stayed hidden. Now they have to face them. Slight AU of "Falling."


_A/N: Hello hello. I have finally succumbed to the amazingness that is Supergirl._

 _I could go into all the details of why I love this show so much but I'll spare you all. But, just for context, this piece fell into my head late last night and I stayed up for hours just writing straight through the entire thing. I have seen all the episodes, but "Falling" and its themes really stuck with me. Especially the heart-wrenching moment in Kara's apartment between her and Alex. And I always thought that everything that was said between them was just glossed over. I wanted to explore it a bit. And ta-da, this piece was born._

 _For the sake of this little thing, J'onn was not captured after the fight with Kara. Let me know what you guys think._

The lab feels too big. It's making it hard to focus on what I'm doing. And the more I try to ignore it the louder the silence gets until my ears are ringing with it. I hadn't realized how accustomed to Kara's chatter I'd gotten. How I took comfort in the squeak of the stool when she spun idly on it as she talked.

I fight the urge to call her. I'm an adult, for crying out loud. I don't need my sister to feel comfortable in my own lab. And she certainly doesn't need me. Sure, she'd had a hiccup with the Red K, but she's fine. I'd checked her out myself before the medics cleared her to leave the DEO that day.

I work on stubbornly. Kara is fine.

Except my mind keeps whispering of her refusal to look at me as I worked and checked her over. Her mumbled "Bye Alex" when she all but ran out. And how I haven't heard from her in two days. Not a peep.

"Damn it," I grumble. I toss the wrench on the table with a clang and reach for my phone. I sit on Kara's stool, spinning idly, and listen to the dial tone.

Once. Twice. Three times. Four.

"Hey." Her voice is bright, but my stomach sinks at the falseness of it.

"Hey you," I say. "Haven't heard from you in a minute. Where've you been?"

"Same place, different day," Kara says. That fake uplift in her voice is still there. "Coffee fetching, travel scheduling. Day in the life of Ms. Grant's assistant."

"You feeling okay?" I ask.

She hesitates a beat too long. "Yeah! Yeah, no, I'm good. Really. Awesome."

"Kara-"

"Look, Alex, I gotta go. Ms. Grant's calling me. We'll talk later, okay?"

"Wait Kara-"

 _Click_.

I blow out a huff of a sigh and try to ignore the pang shooting through my chest. I can't tell if it's for Kara's sake or my own.

I call again the next morning.

"Alex, I'm kinda busy."

"I just wanted to check in, make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine. Really. But I'm busy so..."

"Kara, come on. Just-"

"Bye, Alex." _Click_.

And my heart constricts again, more painfully this time.

"What's wrong with you?" J'onn asks when I march back into the control room.

"Nothing," I snap.

"Kara?"

I glance over at him across the table, and he's giving me such a concerned look that I feel the carefully constructed wall crumbling in an instant.

"She won't talk to me," I say. "I know she's not okay but she won't tell me."

"She's been through a lot, Alex," J'onn says with a slight shrug.

"I know she has, but that doesn't mean she has to deal with it by herself," I say.

"Just give her space. And time."

I give him a deadpan look. "She hates space and time."

"So do you, apparently."

I roll my eyes. "I just want to make sure she's okay. That's it."

"Leave her be. She'll come to you when she's ready."

So I leave her alone. I leave her alone and I watch the news as she does her best to help the people of National City even though they don't want it. Even through the screen I can see her growing heartbreak at the fear she brings just by being there. Every instinct I have screams at me to call. Or better yet, just go over and kick her door down.

So I shut the TV off and go to bed with a sizeable hole in my heart where my little sister should be.

It takes a week. A very long week of having the sensation of an elephant sitting on my chest and going deaf from the silence in the DEO. I'm heading back to my lab with my nose practically plastered to on the chart in my hand. Just as I round the corner through the door I catch a flash of blonde above the sheet of paper.

My heart stutters and I rasp out a startled "Oh" and my sister squeaks around on her stool to face me.

"Hey, sorry. I'm sorry," she stutters, holding up her hands placating. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"S'okay," I reply as my heartrate levels out a little. "Keeps me on my toes."

Kara cracks a tiny grin, but her eyes are guarded. "That's the whole point."

I grin back at her. After a split second of painful deliberation over whether or not to acknowledge the elephant in the room, I go over to my work table and set the chart down. I refocus the best I can on the cylindrical alien tech I've been wrestling with for the past week.

What is it?" Kara asks.

I shrug. "Not really sure yet." I hold it up for her to see. "I've been trying to get it apart so I can take a look at the inside, but according to that -" I wave a hand toward the chart – " It's made of some sort of alloy stronger than diamond. Sooo I'm not getting far."

I don't look at her, but I feel her move closer to get a better look. I pick up my laser, though I've already tried it, and aim it at the tiny smudge I've managed to burn into the smooth coating around the alien tech.

"Can I…?"

I look up at Kara, and she's gesturing to the cylinder I'm about to torch. She's not looking at me, though.

Fighting the sudden urge to cry, I hand it over. "Be my guest."

Kara takes the tech and turns it over carefully in her hands, eyes narrowed.

"Looks kinda nasty in there," she says with a crinkle in her nose. "Like the whole thing's full of some sort of goo."

"Radioactive goo?" I ask. I glance over at my chart. "Apparently it's emitting low levels, almost too low to get picked up."

Kara shrugs. "X-ray vision, Alex. Not radioactivity. But –" she looks up at me sharply – "Shouldn't you be all decked out in some protective stuff? You'll grow a second head or something."

I roll my eyes. "It's like a microwave, Kara. No big deal. But can you open it? Some of us don't actually have x-ray vision."

Kara's lips twitch up. "I can try. I might break it, though." She glances up at me with those guarded eyes and my heart clenches.

"Crack it open, then. I wanna see what you see."

Kara scoffs with another tiny grin. "Nerd." She presses on the cylinder and it immediately cracks in two. A glob of yolk-like sludge drips onto the floor.

"Gross," Kara mutters while I take the tech from her with an excited smile and move around the table toward the microscope. I flit around in search of a slide until Kara hands me one without a word and sinks back onto her stool. I slide a tiny sample of the sludge under the lens.

For a while, Kara stays quiet while I work. But it's not silent. There's the squeak of her seat, the sigh of her breathing, the rustle of her clothes when she fidgets. And when I reach my hand out blindly with a mumbled "Can you hand me a…?" and she wordlessly presses a pen to my palm and a pad of paper next to the microscope.

It's an easy quiet that soothes the ragged edges of the hole she'd left.

Until her phone buzzes and she has it to her ear on the first ring. "What's up, Winn?"

I tear my eyes away from my microscope and watch as her face morphs from easy contentment to fierce and determined. Supergirl mode.

"On my way," she says into the phone and ends the call. She shrugs at me. "Another armed robbery. Gotta go."

I nod. "'Kay." My chest squeezes again. What if it's another whole week before I hear from her again?

"Kara?" I call before she makes it out the door. She turns back to me with curiosity leaping out of her eyes.

"Be careful, okay?" I say.

Kara nods with a quiet "Yup" and then she's gone.

I take a second the calm my aching heart, then I force my eyes back on the microscope.

"You gonna be here a while?"

I gasp and jump about a foot in the air. "Jesus, Kara!"

"Sorry, sorry!" she squeaks. "I didn't- I just- I'm sorry, I just was wondering if you'd be here when I'm done taking care of that." She gestures vaguely to the outside and I stifle a snort.

"Yeah, I'll most likely still be here. But get your butt moving or you're gonna miss it."

Kara rolls her eyes. "Pfft, fine. I'll see you later." And she's gone again.

And now I'm fighting a hopeful smile as I click a dish of the goo into the scanner. She said she'd be back. It's suddenly easier to focus. It's easy to let the science draw me in, to let the nerd in me geek out over the readings the scanner is spitting out. This thing is completely new and unknown. And I'm the one who gets to look at it first. There's a certain thrill in it that I never get tired of, no matter how many times I encounter it.

It's silent in the lab only for a half hour, and then there's a gentle knocking on the doorframe. I look up from the screen, and Kara is standing there in her Supergirl suit, holding up a bag from the food truck in Chicago.

"Study break?" she suggests.

"Just bring it in, I'm too excited about this to stop now," I say. I go back to scanning the outer shell of the tech.

"Nerd," Kara scoffs again, but I can hear the smile in her voice and the crinkle of the bag when she sets it down on the table.

"How'd it go?" I ask.

I see her shrug out of the corner of my eyes. "Got the bad guys."

I squint at the screen in front of me. "You could sound happier about it."

"It's just not the same anymore."

It's her voice, not her words, that has me turning around and completely forgetting about the science cornucopia behind me.

Kara is staring at her toes, scuffing them lightly over the floor. But I know she feels my eyes on her. "Before… I would get there and people would immediately feel better. More hopeful, I mean. I could see it. But now…" She shakes her head. "I broke it, I think."

"It wasn't your fault," I say.

"It was, though."

"No, it was-"

"Don't say it was all the kryptonite, Alex," Kara snaps. She fixes me with shining blue eyes. "It wasn't just the kryptonite and you know it. There was truth to it all and… I'm not..."

She trails off and her eyes lock back on her feet.

"Not what, Kara?"

But she's getting up and making for the door. My heart lurches and I lunge after her. "Kara, wait."

"I'm just gonna go home," she mumbles.

"No, talk to me." I grab her arm and she lets me yank her around to face me. "You haven't talked to me in days."

"I didn't think you'd want me to."

She looks up at me sharply with panicked eyes. Like she hadn't meant for the words to slip out.

"That's not true," I murmur. I grip both her shoulders. "I want you to talk to me. You can always talk to me."

Kara shakes her head and sniffles. "But you said there was truth to it. To what I said."

 _Deep down… You hate me_.

The memory flashes across my mind and I wince at the remembered agony I'd felt as my little sister spat out every thought I wish I'd never had.

Kara's eyes fill and tears spill over her cheeks as I struggle against the suffocating lump in my throat. "But I can't blame you, can I?" Her voice warbles and breaks. "Eliza put so much pressure on you because of me and you literally put your life on hold because of me, so I can't blame you for… feeling that way."

"Kara no, that's not… No." I'm really fighting to find my voice. It's coming out just as broken as hers. "I love you-"

"But you said-"

"I know what I said-"

"So it's true, then?"

"No, just listen-"

"Alex-"

"Why'd you even come here, then?" I finally snap. Kara takes a step back with a crumpling face but I plow on. "If you're so determined to believe that I hate you then why did you even bother coming in the first place?"

Kara looks at me for a moment, and suddenly she's that same scared, lonely girl I met twelve years ago. Desperate for love and a family.

"I missed you," she whispers. "And I hoped that… Maybe… I could at least fix us."

Her bottom lip is trembling and she's not looking at me anymore. She doesn't see me take a shaky step forward, doesn't see me reach out until my trembling hands are cradling her face and gently pulling it up so I can look at her.

"Kara," I murmur. "There is nothing about us that you need to fix, okay? I'm not gonna lie, I did resent you when you first came to us." Kara coughs out a sob and I step closer to her and hold her tighter. "But Kara, you are my little sister. There is nothing that I gave up that I would trade for you. Nothing. You –" I brush her tears away with my thumbs – "are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Okay?"

Kara sobs but nods and I pull her into the tightest hug I can manage. Not for the first time do I wish I could hug her tight enough for her to feel it.

"I'm so sorry," she mumbles into my shoulder. "For all of it. I'm so-"

"Shh." I run my hand down her hair. "Don't you dare be sorry for coming into our lives, Kara. Not ever."

Kara presses her face against my shoulder and grips me almost painfully tight, but I don't try to let her go. I need this just as bad as she does.

"And for the record," I say. "I really missed you too. I was about to go kicking your door down."

Kara huffs a chuckle. "I love you, Alex."

I press a kiss to her hair. "Love you too."


End file.
